Social media as the new way of life?
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-Asmita Laxman Bedalwar
Once Marshall McLuhan said, ‘We make tools, and then tools remake us’. The same goes for social media in today's era. We (human beings) created social media for communication, social interaction, self-expression, and sharing thoughts, but now it has become a tool for socialisation for children, who are often considered the alpha generation, having fully grown up in a society dominated by social media.
Social media shapes the social structure and relationships among children under 16, and it is remaking human beings. The first and foremost concern is that social media is pressuring children to present their ‘best selves’ on various platforms, even as they lose their ‘Authentic selves’. If they are unable to meet these social media beauty standards, they get depressed, and their self-confidence decreases. With no choice left, they are creating the “artificial” bodies seen in Instagram Reels and Snapchat filters. This becomes a vicious cycle of presenting and representing children's own looks with different images, resulting in the loss of their original identity. This gives rise to a new digital world, often called the social media ecology.
Social media ecology is the complex message system that imposes certain ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving on children. It made a new societies which structure what children can see and say, and therefore assigns the roles to those children. For example, online gaming culture shapes the feelings of excitement and adrenaline while paying and frustration and anger when losing, which also shapes the behaviour of long screen times addiction and assigns them the roles like pro player, noobs, etc. Thus, they make their own community in itself. The bad fate is that this kind of digital community is reducing the sense of physical social relationships and bringing change in children's behaviour.
Social media is also cultivating children's worldview, though it may be inaccurate, and it becomes reality because they believe it to be so. Such as rich lifestyle content on Instagram reels or YouTube shorts, which often shows children's luxury cars, big houses, and perfect lives. This distorts the understanding of reality, leading children to believe that everyone is rich or living a luxurious life and to accept this as the real world. Therefore, it create childrens perceptions, beliefs, attitudes, and values (Gerbner & Gross, 1976).
Following the trend of prof. Gerbner, we can identify 3 Bs of Social Media: First, Social Media blurs traditional distinctions of children's views of their world. Secondly, social media blends its realities into social medias cultural mainstream. And last and third, social media bends that mainstream to the institutional interests of social media.
Every aspect of children is affected by social media, including emotions, confidence, self-authenticity, worldview, concentration levels, and more. But talking about studies, it is being degraded more than earlier. Children are more engaged with social media than they are with their studies, which reduces their concentration. Also, they are solely dependent on YouTube content, which creates a space between the children and teachers.
Therefore, I would say that social media has become the primary socialisation agent in this digital era. And such socialisation may prove problematic for the existing society because it reduces children's presence in the social and physical world. The hard reality is that we can remove social media from children's lives, but we can also teach them to use it rationally. Therefore, it became important to raise awareness among social media users to raise their “individual consciousness” and maintain autonomy.
Once Marshall McLuhan said, ‘We make tools, and then tools remake us’. The same goes for social media in today's era. We (human beings) created social media for communication, social interaction, self-expression, and sharing thoughts, but now it has become a tool for socialisation for children, who are often considered the alpha generation, having fully grown up in a society dominated by social media.
Social media shapes the social structure and relationships among children under 16, and it is remaking human beings. The first and foremost concern is that social media is pressuring children to present their ‘best selves’ on various platforms, even as they lose their ‘Authentic selves’. If they are unable to meet these social media beauty standards, they get depressed, and their self-confidence decreases. With no choice left, they are creating the “artificial” bodies seen in Instagram Reels and Snapchat filters. This becomes a vicious cycle of presenting and representing children's own looks with different images, resulting in the loss of their original identity. This gives rise to a new digital world, often called the social media ecology.
Social media ecology is the complex message system that imposes certain ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving on children. It made a new societies which structure what children can see and say, and therefore assigns the roles to those children. For example, online gaming culture shapes the feelings of excitement and adrenaline while paying and frustration and anger when losing, which also shapes the behaviour of long screen times addiction and assigns them the roles like pro player, noobs, etc. Thus, they make their own community in itself. The bad fate is that this kind of digital community is reducing the sense of physical social relationships and bringing change in children's behaviour.
Social media is also cultivating children's worldview, though it may be inaccurate, and it becomes reality because they believe it to be so. Such as rich lifestyle content on Instagram reels or YouTube shorts, which often shows children's luxury cars, big houses, and perfect lives. This distorts the understanding of reality, leading children to believe that everyone is rich or living a luxurious life and to accept this as the real world. Therefore, it create childrens perceptions, beliefs, attitudes, and values (Gerbner & Gross, 1976).
Following the trend of prof. Gerbner, we can identify 3 Bs of Social Media: First, Social Media blurs traditional distinctions of children's views of their world. Secondly, social media blends its realities into social medias cultural mainstream. And last and third, social media bends that mainstream to the institutional interests of social media.
Every aspect of children is affected by social media, including emotions, confidence, self-authenticity, worldview, concentration levels, and more. But talking about studies, it is being degraded more than earlier. Children are more engaged with social media than they are with their studies, which reduces their concentration. Also, they are solely dependent on YouTube content, which creates a space between the children and teachers.
Therefore, I would say that social media has become the primary socialisation agent in this digital era. And such socialisation may prove problematic for the existing society because it reduces children's presence in the social and physical world. The hard reality is that we can remove social media from children's lives, but we can also teach them to use it rationally. Therefore, it became important to raise awareness among social media users to raise their “individual consciousness” and maintain autonomy.